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Act as a Media Company

In the age of transparency, brought on by the development of social media, the message is no longer controlled by brands, instead the audiences now share the conversation. Never before has there been a greater challenge to keep up with your audience. When the brand message is inconsistent with the consumer experience, the gap can quickly become publicly exposed, with high risk that the brand gets scrutinized.

Brand communication has undergone a fundamental shift in the last years. Gone is the age of one-way information and corporate propaganda (advertising). Try not to guard the doors and maintain the control of the conversation, that is a losing battle, the control has already shifted. Instead, join the conversation with relevant, engaging content and the audiences will reward you.

In the world of hyper-connection and omni-channel behavior you need to know the audience in depth to get attention. Content has to be relevant, engaging, consistent, and based on facts. And you need a media strategy for distribution with a proactive planning of communication to be present 24/7.

How to manage? Create a Brand Newsroom

”Every company is a media company” as Tom Foremski, former Financial Times journalist and publisher of tech blog Silicon Valley Watcher, has been stated for years. And that’s true and easy to say but quite hard to implement in the corporate world. Tom Foremski points out that many companies have not understood the core: media companies do not create media about themselves.

Well, companies should talk about themselves, but there has to be a shift in mindset to make a Brand Newsroom work. Here are a few things you need to bare in mind.

Be transparent and be honest about who you are. When there is issues that can create a negative view of your reputation, be proactive and communicate why and how you are acting on it. Admit mistakes and apologize, that will make you more trustful.

Have an opinion. People respond to content that comes with a point of view. Try to find other relevant stories outside your company to comment on to create a conversation with your audience.

How to start building a Brand Newsroom.

First let’s have a look at the characteristics of an Editorial Newsroom:

Produce and publish content with authority, integrity and accuracy.

The editor-in-chief has to show leadership like an orchestra conductor; never a moment of indecision or doubt. Built on structure and control as well as inspiration and empowering the news team.

Planning and managing content. The ability to publish breaking news as well as in-depth content. Proactive and reactive at the same time.

Translate these characteristics into a Brand Newsroom this would mean that you have to secure:

a centralized team of skilled media professionals. Focused on covering stories and compelling story-telling

that processes and structure are designed to provide quality and accurate content quickly, to keep dead-lines.

aligned approval processes to secure the ability to act fast.

an edurance to produce and distribute content 24/7.

a leadership that can build controls, processes and workflows that facilitate collaboration among teams, partners and also customers.

A few words about the new logic of how to handle media channels strategically.

Traditionally there has been three different channels to distribute media; paid, earned and owned. Now there is a fourth channel; shared or social media. And with the rise in importance of social media and online PR, there is a need to change method of how to divide investments and reporting to reflect the types of communication channels where audiences spend their time online. The trend is that paid and earned media decrease in favor of shared and owned. One of the success factors of a Brand Newsroom is the ability to handle the mix of channels for media for all content and all audiences.

The Communication Agenda

A method to use internally to create a communicating organization. It is a major challenge for any organization to get managers and employees to act as advocates for the brand. As part of the business strategy process the Communication Agenda is developed to support all managers to have one presentation that describes why, what and how to communicate the corporate brand story. On the next level the business, market or product areas can develop their tactical Communication Plans and packaging messages into communication and actions.

Would you like to know more?

We’d love to meet you to discuss how your organization could discover reputation risks and opportunities – and get started in creating a clear identity in the social media age.

As a starting point – we typically perform a quick assessment of your current reputation profile, and prepare a plan of prioritized actions based on our first hand experiences on how to gear up your organization for the changes ahead.